It broke against barricades and makeshift bunkers, concentrated
bolter fire chewing through the daemons as quickly as they could
advance.
In other places it swept through in a flood, swamping Imperial Fists
in a mass of limbs and bodies. Some defences were denuded by pink
and azure flame, blasted from the orifices of misshapen creatures
dragged along on the tide of Abraxes’s own incandescent daemons.
Others were outflanked by lightning-fast monsters with purplish skin
and lashing tongues that swept around firepoints to strike from behind.
A massive red-winged daemon, axe in one hand and lash in the other,
strode at the head of its bloodletters and with vicious strike cleaved
one of the tanks brought up from the Phalanx’s hangars in two, spilling
flaming promethium around its feet.
The Imperial Fists line bent under the weight of the assault, Space
Marines vaulting their barriers to take up new positions closer to the
Tactica before they were overrun. Bolter fire competed with the
shrieking of daemons in the din of the battle. The whole deck seemed
to bow and buckle under the weight of it, as the monastic cells and
chapels of the Imperial Fists disappeared under the flood of Abraxes’s
assault.
At the heart of the line, Chapter Master Vladimir stood with the
Fangs of Dorn in his hands. One of the Librarium novices stood before
him, holding up a huge tome normally bound closed by chains and
psychic seals. It contained prayers of purity and strength of mind, of
which a commander had to be mindful when facing the corruptive
forces of Chaos. Ahead of him, Lysander marshalled the strongest
defences, a handful of tanks and several squads of Imperial Fists along
with Kolgo’s Battle Sisters, holding position as the daemon army grew
closer with every moment.
‘What manner of foe is Chaos?’ mused Vladimir. Beside him stood
Lord Inquisitor Kolgo, ready for battle with a power fist encasing one
hand and a rotator cannon on the other, each weapon engraved with
prayers and wards of destruction.
‘Better men than I have gone mad seeking the answer to that
question,’ replied Kolgo. ‘The question of Chaos cannot be answered.’
‘And yet we must seek an answer,’ said Vladimir. ‘For we must fight
it. In ignorance, we fight as if in the dark.’
‘Better that than be corrupted by what we see,’ said Kolgo. He
flexed the mechanical fingers of his power fist, and they crackled as
the power field sprung into life around them.
‘I trust in the strength of my soul, inquisitor,’ said Vladimir. Ahead,
Imperial Fists were scrambling into cover beside the second line as
the daemons galloped and shambled closer, multicoloured flames
dancing over the battlefield. The pale, lithe shape of Abraxes himself
was just visible in the rear ranks, watching and controlling his battle,
using up the lesser daemons under his command to buy his victory
one death at a time. ‘I shall not become one with the enemy by
understanding it. The more I learn of Chaos, the more I hate it, and the
fiercer I fight.’
‘Overestimating one’s resolve is a more dangerous form of ignorance
than fighting in the dark.’ Kolgo span the barrels of his rotator cannon,
jewel-encrusted hammers clicking down on gilded chambers.
‘Then let us put our theories into practice,’ said Vladimir.
‘I concur,’ said Kolgo. Shall we?’
‘Brothers!’ yelled Vladimir over the vox. ‘To the fore, my brothers,
with me! Through hell and to victory, onwards!’
At Vladimir’s words, the Imperial Fists broke cover and charged. The
reserve force holding the Tactica ran from behind its map tables and
the shelter of its archways. The Space Marines crouched behind their
defences, muttered their prayers and leapt over the defences, bolters
blazing and chainblades whirring. Vladimir led the counter-attack right
into the face of the enemy.
The twin blades of the Fangs of Dorn were not made for an elegant
battle. They were not weapons for duelling or weaving a dance of feint
and deception. They were made for this brutal and ugly fight, the press
of bodies and the triumph of strength and resolve over skill, where they
could rise and fall with every stab piercing a belly or driving up into a
throat.
Vladimir slew a dozen daemons in those first few seconds, and
Abraxes’s horrors fell before him, opening up a gap in the daemonic
lines. Imperial Fists charged in behind him and exploited the gap,
forging in further.
Kolgo stood atop a rampart and hammered volley after volley from
his rotator cannon into the host. The Battle Sisters formed up around
him, Sister Aescarion directing their fire with a gesture of her power
axe. A pair of Predator tanks rumbled up from either side of the
Tactica, each roar of an autocannon echoed by an explosion of flame
and torn daemonflesh deep within Abraxes’s lines.
Without warning the horrors seemed to melt away, dissolving into
the rear ranks at a mental command from Abraxes. In the few seconds
of respite, the Imperial Fists saw ranks of bloodletters marching out to
replace them. In their centre was a greater daemon of the Blood God,
allied to Abraxes’s cause by the raw slaughter that battle on the
Phalanx promised. It stepped over the front rows of bloodletters and a
massive cloven hoof slammed down among the Imperial Fists,
crushing a battle-brother under its immense weight.
‘Onwards! Onwards! The warp fears us so, to place such horrors in
our way!’ Vladimir’s voice, even amplified over the vox, was barely
audible over the foul, shuddering gale of the greater daemon’s roar.
Vladmir hacked through the first couple of bloodletters to reach him as
he jumped up onto the half-fallen wall of a chapel, tumbled and
scorched in the first assault, that brought him up above the level of the
swirling combat around him.
The greater daemon turned its shaggy, bestial head towards
Vladimir. Imperial Fists were hacking their way through the advancing
bloodletters to form up around their Chapter Master, but the greater
daemon could simply step over the melee, and in moments its shadow
passed over Vladimir.
The Imperial Fist held the Fangs of Dorn out wide, presenting
himself as a target to the greater daemon, taunting it with his refusal to
flee from the monstrosity.
‘You dare walk into my domain, and shed the blood of my brothers?’
yelled Vladimir. ‘Who do you think you face here? What victory do you
think you can win? All the fury of the warp will falter against the soul of
one good Space Marine!’
The greater daemon bellowed and raised its axe, already slick with
Adeptus Astartes blood. The axe arced down and Vladimir jumped to
the side, the blade cleaving down through the ruined chapel. Vladimir
stabbed both the Fangs of Dorn through the greater daemon’s wrist
and ripped them out again, snapping tendons and tearing muscle. The
greater daemon pulled its arm back and howled in
anger, following up
its axe blow with a strike from its whip.
The whip moved too fast for even Vladimir to avoid. Its barbs lashed
around his leg and the daemon yanked him off his feet, into the air,
and cast him down to the ground in the heart of the bloodletters.
The Soulspear was still in Iktinos’s hand. Its glowing black blade was
being forced up under Sarpedon’s chin, towards his throat, to slice his
head off. Sarpedon grabbed Iktinos’s wrist and fought the Chaplain, but
death had unlocked some new fortitude in Iktinos and in that moment
the two were matched in strength.
Sarpedon could feel the skin on his face burning. Pain meant
something different to a Space Marine compared to a normal man, but
it was still pain and Sarpedon struggled as much to avoid blacking out
as he did with Iktinos.
The Axe of Mercaeno was trapped under Iktinos. Sarpedon tried to
wrench it free, but Iktinos would not relent. He tried to roll over so
Iktinos would be trapped beneath, but the Chaplain would not budge,
as if he was anchored to the deck.
‘You obey,’ hissed Sarpedon. ‘Obedience only comes from one
place.’ He saw his own features reflected in the eyepieces of Iktinos’s
mask, the blistering wounds creeping up his face. ‘It comes from fear.’
Sarpedon let go of the Axe and reached up to place his hand on the
back of Iktinos’s head. He found a grip and tore the Chaplain’s helmet
away.
Iktinos’s face was charred and twisted by the heat. The bubbling
skin was stretched tight over the skull, the eyes buried in scorched
pits, the scalp coming apart. There was no dimming in the hate on
Iktinos’s features. The pain made it stronger. There was almost no
resemblance to the face that Sarpedon knew, none of the Chaplain’s
calm and resolve, just the intensity of his hatred.
‘I know what you fear,’ said Sarpedon. His hand clamped to the
back of Iktinos’s burning skull, and he unleashed the full force of the
Hell into the traitor’s mind.
The pain helped. Normally Sarpedon unleashed the Hell out wide,
capturing as many of the enemy as possible in its hallucinations. This
time he focused it until it was a white-hot psychic spear, thrust into
Iktinos’s mind like a hypodermic needle loaded with everything the
Chaplain feared.
He feared Daenyathos. Fear, in some deep and unrecognisable
form, was the only thing that could force a Space Marine to obey with
such unthinking, unquestioning ferocity. Everything that Sarpedon
knew about the Philosopher-Soldier was forced into the point of fire
and turned into something appalling.
Like a god of the warp itself, the form of Daenyathos loomed in front
of Iktinos’s mind’s eye. Daenyathos appeared as he had in illuminated
manuscripts of his Catechisms Martial, but vast in size and infinitely
more terrible. Around his legs rushed a torrent of broken bodies, all the
Soul Drinkers whose lives he had spent following his monstrous plan.
His armour was inscribed with exhortations to death and torture, words
of the Catechisms Martial twisted and devolved. Thousands of
innocents were crucified against the armour of his greaves. His chest
and shoulder guards were covered with the forms of the betrayed, sunk
into the armour as if half-digested. The heroes of the old Chapter –
Captain Caeon, Chapter Master Gorgoleon and the victims of the First
Chapter War, manipulated into conflict to satisfy Daenyathos’s desire
for a Chapter at odds with the Imperium. The dead of Sarpedon’s
Chapter, from Givrillian to Scamander, Captain Karraidin, Sarpedon’s
dearest friend Techmarine Lygris and all the others who had fallen.
Around the collar of Daneyathos’s armour were clustered his allies
in treachery. The cruellest of Inquisitors who had forced the Soul
Drinkers into the extremes of exile. Aliens despatched by Sarpedon
and his brethren, as Daenyathos watched on, satisfied that they had
played their part – the necron creature who had almost killed Sarpedon
on Selaaca, the renegade eldar lord of Gravehnhold, the ork warlord of
Nevermourn, all gathered in celebration.
Alongside them were the very worst of his allies. The followers of the
dark gods – Abraxes, Ve’Meth, a host of Traitor Marines and
daemons. The mutant Teturact and his legion of the dead. And
Daenyathos himself, his face lit by the fires of wrath itself, laughing
with the agents of betrayal of whose wickedness he had been the
architect.
Daenyathos looked down at Iktinos, pinned squirming below him like
something trapped in a microscope slide. The vastness of his
displeasure, mixed with a terrible knowing mockery, hammered into
Iktinos’s mind as fiercely as any weapon that Sarpedon could have
wielded.
Iktinos screamed. In his mind, the sound was lost among the
laughter of Daenyathos, who revelled in seeing one of his most selfimportant
pawns being forced to understand his own insignificance. In
reality, the sound was so completely unlike anything a warrior of the
Adeptus Astartes should ever utter that Iktinos ceased to be a Space
Marine in that moment.
The Chaplain’s grip relaxed. Sarpedon threw him off and rolled out of
the flames. He stood over the prostrate Iktinos.
Iktinos’s mind had utterly shattered. Sarpedon’s psychic senses
were not sharp, but even he could feel it, a growing void where once
of his broken personality.
‘I own you now,’ said Sarpedon. ‘I am the one you obey. Tell me
everything.’
The faces of the daemons crowded around, twisted and jeering, the
solid mass of their features broken by the black iron blades that cut
down to finish off Chapter Master Vladimir.
The Fangs of Dorn were just suited to fighting this close, where they
parried and stabbed as if moving in Vladimir’s hand by some will of
their own. Perhaps Dorn himself wielded them in those moments,
reaching from the Emperor’s side to lend his own skill to Vladimir’s
struggle to survive.
It would not be enough. There were too many of them, every one
eager to be the one who carried the skull of a Chapter Master back to
the warp, to throw it at the foot of the Blood God’s throne.
Vladimir stabbed up into a daemon’s ribcage even as he turned
another blade away from his hearts, and prepared to die.
A streak of orange flame burned across his vision, swathing the
contorted faced in fire. He was aware of glossy black armour
embellished in red, and the blade of a power axe shimmering as it cut
in every direction. Hands grabbed him and dragged him out of the
mass. Vladimir looked up and saw the unfamiliar face of a woman
above him, streaked with blood and grime, teeth gritted.
‘Not while we live,’ she hissed through her teeth, ‘shall they take
such a prize.’
She hauled Vladimir to his feet. He recognised Sister Aescarion, the
Superior of Lord Inqiusitor Kolgo’s reti
nue. The jump pack she wore on
her back smouldered, its exhaust vanes glowing a dull red, and the
path she had carved through the daemons as she dived into the throng
after Vladimir was closing as the bloodletters fought to swamp
Vladimir again.
‘My thanks, Sister,’ said Vladimir as he found his footing.
‘Through me, the Emperor works,’ she replied.
The two stood back to back as the bloodletters closed. Now
Vladimir could let the Fangs of Dorn do their finest work, stabbing so
rapidly up into the advancing daemon ranks that every moment another
of them fell, ribcage split open or burning entrails spilling from a
ruptured abdomen. Aescarion fought with her axe in one hand and a
pistol in the other, quickly rattling off the pistol’s magazine and then
taking the axe in both hands.
A Sister of Battle could not match a Space Marine’s sheer strength
and skill. Few unaugmented humans could approach a veteran
Superior’s ability, but even so she was just that – human, without the
extra organs and enhanced physiology of the Adeptus Astartes. But
what she lacked in their physical superiority, she made up with in
faith.
It was not a Space Marine’s mental fortitude that Vladimir witnessed
in Aescarion. A Space Marine was a master of his fear, his mind so
strong he could face even the daemons of the warp and remain sane.
Aescarion was different. It was not conditioning and strength of duty,
raw bloody-mindedness, that fuelled her. It was faith. She believed so
completely in the Emperor’s hand guiding her, in the place she had in
His plan, that it was as plain to her as the enemy closing in around
her. She did not fear them, because in her mind she was not a human
being with human frailties. She was a hollow vessel that existed to be
filled up with the will of the Emperor and used as He willed it. There
could be no fear, when whatever end befell not her, but the Emperor.
Vladimir led the way back towards the Imperial Fists lines, opening
up a path as the Fangs of Dorn flashed as quick and deadly as the
teeth of a giant chainblade. He had to force his legs out of the sucking
mire of gore and entrails around his feet. Aescarion’s axe gave her
reach and she swung it in great arcs as she followed, smashing falling
blades aside and keeping a good sword’s length between her and the